A Voice from Beyond

Editor's Note: I'm doing something out of the ordinary this time and making the final blog entry for this month about what someone other than me wrote.  This particular text is lifted from the ResetEra forums (yeah...I know the admin and mod team there are trash, but the same doesn't hold true for all the website's members).  Case in point, a user going by the name of "PlanetSmasher" shared an interesting idea they had regarding From Software developing a new entry in the Castlevania franchise.  Everything that follows in this post is their words (aside from a few minor typos that I corrected).  Please enjoy...and I'll be back in a week or so.  

I've been thinking a lot about how Castlevania needs to be brought back. Konami's put a ton of muscle (rightly or wrongly is up to you) behind Silent Hill, but the original Konami classic is as of now relegated to a few remaster collections. I don't think this is right. Castlevania deserves a full revival, with real meat and bone behind it.

And I think the ideal candidate for such a revival is From Software.

Now, before you accuse me of using From Software as a new-generation version of the "give every game to Platinum" meme, hear me out. I think the ideal way to bring Castlevania back as a franchise is as a hybrid of design elements from Bloodborne and Elden Ring. In many of the linear Classicvania games, especially the ones after the original Vampire Killer, the player begins their journey outside of Dracula's castle and has to cross Wallachia to get to the titular Castlevania before beginning their climb up to face Drac himself. This has also been reflected to some degree in some of the Metroidvania games such as Mirror of Fate, Portrait of Ruin, Curse of Darkness and Order of Ecclesia, all of which spend significant time outside of the castle.

So imagine this: you get to create your own vampire hunter and pick their lineage at the beginning of the game. Are they a Belmont? They get bonus damage with whip weapons. Are they a Dhampir? They can regenerate HP by damaging enemies, but only at night. Are they descended from clan Belnades? Their MP passively regenerates. And so on and so forth. Once you've created your hunter, you're dropped into a ramshackle hut on the outskirts of Wallachia. Your only goal is to reach Dracula's Castle and kill the big man himself. Once you leave the hut and finish the tutorial, you get a view of this, looming in the distance on the other side of a great field:

How you get there, how you get in, and what you bring with you is up to you.

The Wallachian countryside is littered with villages under siege by Dracula's supernatural forces, and smaller palaces run by his lieutenants. Countess Elizabeth Bathory's blood-soaked mansion sits on an island in the middle of a lake, filled with the bodies of her blood-drained victims. Count Orlok rules over a small gateway fortress dividing part of the map off from the rest - he must be defeated to open the colossal gate. Each of these lieutenants' home bases can act as the spiritual equivalent of a Legacy Dungeon, providing the player with mid-scale goals to conquer on their way to face off against Dracula in the main castle. And along the way, smaller areas like haunted graveyards, vampire-operated dungeons and cursed temples can fill the role of the smaller dungeons, providing shorter-term goals and sources of special weapons and gear.

Obviously, Dracula's Castle will make up a substantial chunk of the game. I see it as being the size of two or two-and-a-half Elden Ring legacy dungeons stapled together - reaching the castle is your first goal, and then actually surviving the journey through it is the second half of the game. The castle can be divided into several sub-dungeons like the Alchemy Laboratory and the Long Library, each with their own level design quirks, special loot finds and bosses. As you make your way to the top, collecting artifacts to unlock doors and higher floors, you'll occasionally be able to look out over the countryside and see the places you explored before, or spot areas you missed on your journey to the castle, before finally reaching the Keep and facing Dracula himself.

While I could see the logic in making the game more of a Sekiro-type with a fixed player moveset based around the Vampire Killer, I think the goal should be to try to encapsulate multiple playstyles. The classic Belmont playstyle of a whip (and a backup sword) mixed with classic subweapons standing in for spells or Hunter Tools would be fairly easy to adapt, but they should also allow players to go with a more Belnades-inspired spell-slinging build, or one more inspired by Alucard with quick, speedy melee attacks and technical magic. This would allow them to fill out the side content with all kinds of weapons, spells, and items to discover, including classic Castlevania weapons like the Crissaegrim, the Cross Boomerang and Sypha's litany of ice spells, giving players more customization choices for their builds.

And hell, now that From has finally figured out jumping in their games, you can even work in some mild platforming challenges. Maybe one of the dungeons is the legendary Clock Tower, full of Medusa Heads and giant clock gears that the player has to navigate to reach the top, where everybody's favorite scythe-slinging bastard is ready to challenge them.

When I played Bloodborne all those years ago, the entire way through it I thought to myself "this is the way Castlevania should've evolved in 3D" - and with the improvements to movement and exploration that Elden Ring premiered, I think it's now finally time for From to take the reins of the Castlevania series from Konami and make something truly legendary that blends the strengths of Castlevania's core concept with the challenge and dedication to a setting that From has built their entire brand around.

Only One Chance to Make a Second Impression

Scorn is a short game.  How long it takes to complete varies from person to person but, in terms of hours, the length seems to be somewhere in the mid single digit range.  It's a bit disappointing considering the price tag, and the fact that the game spent over seven years in development.  Even so, there is still greater potential for Scorn in the form of a sequel.

Whenever a dev team is considering a whether or not to make a follow-up to one of their video games, it's a good idea to look at player feedback.  In the case of Scorn, a lot of the criticisms boils down to certain players being disappointed that the game wasn't a run'n'gun style shooter, or a walking sim, or another entry in the survival horror genre.  Scorn is most definitely creepy, but it's more focused on psychological and body horror than anything else.  For some that might lessen its appeal, but I think those focal points (along with the strong visual presentation) are what make the game noteworthy.  Having said all that, there are some aspects of Scorn that could be improved upon in a sequel.

Combat in Scorn is neither good nor bad.  A lot of fights in the game can be avoided with a little patience and some attention placed on character movement within the environment.  Personally, I think it's a nice touch.  Sadly, that design philosophy doesn't extend to the end "boss" encounter.  In fact, what is supposed to be the final climatic battle is a bit tedious (or possibly just underwhelming, depending on how quickly the player can figure out what they need to do).  Pro tip: side strafing is slow, sprinting forward and changing facing with the mouse is a faster and a better way to avoid damage.  I think that having a slight puzzle design to enemies is a good way to make combat more interesting.  Something along the lines of shoot-one-place-to-open-up-a-weak-point is preferable to the overused aim-for-the-head strategy.  Especially since the monsters in Scorn don't really conform to human norms.

As far as locations go, there is a number of places that could be added based on cut content alone.  The artbook for Scorn features concept drawings for a tower and labyrinth areas that never made it into the final game.  There's even an underground crypt-like zone that was supposed to be part of "Polis" (the temple structure players travel to by railcar at the end of the game).  As far as I can tell based on screenshots and trailers a hall of heads was made using in-game assets, but for whatever reason wasn't accessible in the game.  The same sort of thing holds true for some of the more interesting bits of lore.  There are some neat details about the "Homunculi" (those Krang/Utrom looking creatures in jars of red liquid) and three-eyed people (one of which dies after emerging from a pod next to the place where players acquire the door key and ammo/healing storage device) that could be integrated into a sequel.  

Scorn is a bit deceptive when it comes to continuity.  For example the face we see in the background of the main menu is actually that of the prologue character after he was incased in that white sludge at the end of the prologue.  When beginning a new game, the opening cutscene flashes back and forth to the events that led up to this.  For a sequel it might be interesting to take an approach similar to Half-life: Opposing Force or Half-life: Blue Shift...show us some of the same places as before, but from a different point of view under different circumstances.  Personally, I'd like to play as a "Mold Man" (one of those poor wretches encountered near the beginning of the game) who is trying to find refuge for themselves and their kin, but maybe that's just me looking for an excuse to root for the underdogs.  Regardless, I hope that we do get a Scorn sequel someday.  I feel like Kepler Interactive has only scratched the surface of the world that they've created.  

For Science (and Fun)

Realistic space sci-fi has some difficult challenges when it comes to mainstream gaming appeal.  Certainly a lot of the math involved could be abstracted, but unless spaceships have delta-v budgets and heat radiators then what's the point?  Saying your spaceship runs on pixie dust and crocodile tears would be just as accurate as some technobabble like "nanomachines powered by zero-point quantum energy."  That all said, I'm not posting this blog entry simply to dunk on Star Trek or Star Wars.  There are a lot of people (myself included) who enjoy fantastical stories and that's totally okay.  Instead, what I want to do is highlight some aspects of hard science fiction that could hold wider appeal if they were executed in clever ways

Automation is a major component of real-life space exploration.  Quite a bit of spaceflight involves math and calculations that are the kind of thing that computers excel at.  What they're not so good at is trouble-shooting.  Generally speaking, keeping humans alive and well in space is tricky.  It requires a menagerie of special equipment which could be replaced with other resources that are more mission specific.  The thing is though tasks that take a Mars rover hours to complete could be done by a human in a matter of minutes.  Additionally, there are much more stringent limits as to what a machine can accomplish.  So, the basic takeaway here is a few astronauts supported by computers go a long way compared to a setup that relies completely on automation.  For folks who love space battles, this means a bunch of warships would only need a few (or maybe even just one) manned spaceship for command and support purposes.  Vessels such as tankers and cargo vessels wouldn't need any crew, but a tender or salvage/repair spacecraft would almost certainly benefit from having trained professionals onboard.  Some examples of games that capture this reality to varying degrees are as follows:

• Carrier Commander
• Advanced Wars: Days of Ruin
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker
• House of the Dying Sun
• Mission Critical

Asymmetric warfare is another aspect of space that often gets overlooked.  Taking vehicle stat sheets and bashing them into each other is a time-honored tradition of war games, but not necessarily an accurate depiction.  Just because we don't get massive capital ships exchanging point-blank pyrotechnic broadsides, doesn't mean it has to be boring to look at though.  Actual visuals could be swapped out for tactical displays.  Lasers might be invisible to the naked eye, but there's no reason not to show them on a sensor readout.  The same is true for size scales and distances.  Time, too, can be skipped over so as to not bore the player with long uneventful journeys.  Best of all these kinds of games can be educational in an indirect way.  Scientific realities might be overwhelming in their totality, but in smaller (more digestible) chunks it is possible to advance a player's understanding simply by interacting with such games.    

War isn't a Game, or is it?

 

A Game Made of Games

Making a video game that consists of several smaller games (all stitched together) is a hardly a new concept.  The first game I can recall playing that embraced this design aesthetic was Defender of the Crown.  The oldest I ever played was almost certainly Beachhead, a game that initially released way back in 1983.  Of course more recently there are a bunch of Nintendo games that fit this mold such as Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and the Mario Party series.  While these sorts of games provide a nice variety of gaming experiences all rolled into a single title, there is the problem of one weak entry dragging the whole product down.  The asteroid turret sequence has a notorious reputation among fans of the original Dead Space.  Personally, I found turning up the in-game brightness and disabling the rumble control enough to make it a doable (although still not terribly fun) experience.  To me, these sorts of diversions are only a minor annoyance, like hacking mini-games in a third-person shooter.  The problem is, what if one of the uninteresting mini-games is actually a major component?  I've heard people say they don't like either the tactical or strategic layer in Total War games, which sounds like a hard thing to work around as a player looking for enjoyment.  Both of those "games" work in conjunction with each other to create the overall experience.  Certainly it's possible to play one without the other - skirmish mode for tactile engagements only and auto-resolve for people who just want to strategize.  However, I can't help but feeling that maybe Total War really isn't the series for them.  So, now that the lengthy introductions are out of the way, what is the main thrust of this particular blog post?  Well...to sum it up in two words:  Terra Invicta.

Brought to us by the same creative minds behind the Long War mods for the XCOM and XCOM 2 reboots, Terra Invicta (Latin for "unconquered land") is the name of their first stand-alone title.  It definitely has some thematic similarities to the XCOM series.  Unlike those games though (which are mostly about turn-based squad-sized firefights) Terra Invicta's gameplay has more in common with a lot of Paradox titles in that it is grand strategy in real-time.  Upon closer examination though it isn't simply a modern version of Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis, but actually three games stacked on top of each other.  At the bottom is an incredibly detailed global domination simulation.  Almost every country found in the world today is simulated via a collection of numerical values: population, GDP, wealth distribution, economic ties, cultural unity, etc.  The player takes the role of one of seven different international factions, each with their own agenda and agents.  The goal here is to gain control over various nations by subterfuge or military action.  Things like nuclear weaponry and global warming are thrown in to enhance the sim aspect, but what makes Terra Invicta similar to XCOM is the presence of nefarious alien invaders.  There's a twist though...you can take the battle to them.

Well...sort of...the second game (which sits on top of the previously mentioned one) is a space colonization simulation.  It's more abstracted than say Kerbal Space Program, but there are still a number of considerations that players must make regarding where and what to scout and mine within the confines of our solar system.  True to real life, launching payloads into space is less resource intensive the closer the rocket facility is to the equator.  Aside from every planet and moon, a variety of large asteroids are modeled all the way out to the Kuiper Belt. This is also entirely contested territory for the various aforementioned factions since they continue to be rivals in space.  The aliens are here as well, attempting to infiltrate humanity and escalating matters when they are met with failure or threats.  Figuring out what they are and what they want is a mystery that the player must unravel in an echo of XCOM's tried-and-true campaign structure.  The topmost game is the last players will find themselves interacting with.  It's a proper space combat simulation complete with real physics models, supported by current and near future technology.  Players can design their own ships and even give them maneuvering orders in combat.  There is an auto-pilot feature, as well as the ability to pause the action at any time.  What is lacking is a combat log, but this is an early access game so...work in progress, I suppose.  

UI, AI and optimization issues aside, Terra Invicta has some general problems at the weld points between each of its three games.  Balance is one way to phrase the problem, but the needed solution, fine tuning, is a tall order to fulfil given how complex it all is.  To paraphrase a quote from the strategy game podcast Three Moves Ahead, "I can't believe this game doesn't immediately collapse under the weight of its own hubris."  I sincerely hope we don't see too much in the way of feature creep, and in fact some simplification of certain subsystems might be the easiest way to iron out the wrinkles as the game approaches its full release.  It's ambitious and interesting, but I have no desire to dive into a 40 to 100 hour long game of Terra Invicta until is has received a hefty amount of polish.  To those determined individuals who are playing it extensively now though I say best of luck and I hope you have fun.